Sweden Election Results See Surge In Support For Anti-Immigrant Party

The specific contest is for seats in the 349-seat national legislature. But the election is also about the country’s response to Europe’s refugee crisis. Sweden took in about 160,000 refugees in 2015. It’s not a large number, but it was the most per capita in Europe. Now the nationalist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, a group with roots in the neo-Nazi movement, is poised to win at least enough seats to influence the direction of the new government. Journalist Maddy Savage is in Stockholm …

The surge in the anti-immigrant party is not a surprise. The terrorist incidents last month in Sweden by immigrants with Islamic backgrounds and their supporters (see Terrorists strike Sweden and UK) was not going to endear them to the ordinary Swede.

What next for Sweden after election nailbiter?

As expected, neither the centre-left nor the centre-right bloc obtained a majority in Sunday’s vote. The far-right Sweden Democrats solidified their position as the country’s third-biggest party with a vote share of 17.6 percent at the latest count. …

Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s red-green left bloc currently has a razor-thin one-seat lead over the centre-right opposition Alliance, with nearly 200,000 ballots from Swedes who voted abroad still to be counted on Wednesday.

Both the Social Democrats and the Moderates, the two largest traditional parties on the left and right respectively, saw their share in the vote shrink from the numbers they posted in 2014.

We asked political scientist Nicholas Aylott, an associate professor at Södertörn University, how the provisional result changes expectations. …

Why are the Sweden Democrats, the third-largest party, still unlikely to be involved in government?

“It’s pretty much inconceivable that the left bloc would be prepared to accept that (Sweden Democrat) support or govern with that support. The really sharp dilemmas are faced by the four parties of the centre-right, the Alliance parties. In principle, they could take over power tomorrow – or as soon as parliament reopens – if the four of them were prepared to reach some sort of, even vague and implicit, accommodation with the Sweden Democrats. The trouble is, the two centre-most of them [the Centre and Liberal parties, ed.] have said that they will not under any circumstances consider that.

“So that puts those two parties on the horns of a really, really acute dilemma. Do they go back on what they said about refusing any support from the Sweden Democrats, particularly if the Alliance isn’t bigger than the left bloc, or do they go back on what they said about trying to remove a Social Democratic prime minister?” https://www.thelocal.se/20180910/what-next-for-sweden-after-election-nailbiter

Essentially, the Swedish vote total for the Swedish Democrats is posing dilemmas for the other parties.

Unlike the system in the USA, many other nations tend to be governed by a coalition of political parties. But, unless some coalition includes the Swedish Democrats, it will be very difficult to form a consensus government. However, as the expression goes, “politics makes strange bedfellows,” so it may be that one or more of the ‘left’ and ‘right’ parties in Sweden will crossover to the other side.

We will see.

But that will not solve the anti-immigration sentiment in Sweden.

This will not solve the complaints of the migrants nor the complaints of those opposed to the migrants.

Notice the following from the Washington Post:

September 10, 2018

On Sunday, voters went to the polls in Sweden. The result confirmed what the polls had forecast: a record high for the national populist Sweden Democrats, …

As the last votes are being counted, the party has surpassed 17 percent, its highest vote share on record.

This was accompanied by sharp losses for the two big mainstream parties as Sweden’s party system fragments. Since the 1970s, the center-left Social Democrats and the center-right Moderates have regularly won more than 60 percent of the vote. That has dropped to 48 percent as a number of smaller parties, including the radical left, gained support. Nonetheless, the center-left has recorded its lowest vote share in more than a century.

None of this was supposed to happen in Sweden — a stable democracy with a reputation for liberalism. …

Immigration in Sweden is connected to rising public concern about crime, social order, terrorism and perceived threats to the national way of life. All of these issues have received coverage in Swedish media. …

Even though the Sweden Democrats remain a minority, their impact is already being felt. The Social Democrats have already pledged to reduce welfare for failed asylum seekers, strengthen identity and border checks, clamp down on the freedom of refugees to choose where to live, and permanently ban failed asylum seekers from ever returning to Sweden if they do not leave voluntarily. The mainstream parties have also called for a stronger integration policy. Sweden’s mainstream parties are doing what many established parties in Europe are doing: shifting right on identity issues to fend off the challenge from national populism and appeal to voters concerned about immigration and terrorism.

When my wife and I were in Sweden in May of 2017, we heard first hand that Swedes have concerns about what to do with the Islamic immigrants. Now, their politicians seem to be a little bit more open about it.

On June 8, 2018, Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced the closing of seven Islamic mosques in an effort to reduce “political Islam.” In the past several years, at least 6 European nations have banned the wearing of a commonly used garment by Islamic females. Heinz-Christian Strache (later Vice Chancellor of Austria) has declared that Islam has no place in Europe. Did Germany’s Angela Merkel call multiculturalism a failure? Will there be deals between the Muslims and the Europeans? Will a European Beast leader rise up after a reorganization that will eliminate nationalism? Will Europe push out Islam? What does Catholic prophecy teach? What does the Bible teach in Daniel and Revelation? Is Islam prophesied to be pushed out of Europe? Dr. Thiel addresses these issues and more.